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Goddard, Cliff, Taboada, Maite, & Trnavac, Radoslava (2016). Semantic descriptions of 24 evaluational adjectives, for application in sentiment analysis (Technical report SFU-CMPT TR 2016-42-1). Vancouver: Simon Fraser University, School of Computing Science. PDF (open access)

This technical report applies the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to the lexical-semantic analysis of English evaluational adjectives and compares the results with the picture developed in Martin & White’s Appraisal Framework. The analysis is corpus-assisted, with examples mainly drawn from film and book reviews, and supported by collocational and statistical information from WordBanks Online. NSM explications are proposed for 24 evaluational adjectives, and it is argued that they fall into five groups, each of which corresponds to a distinct semantic template. The groups can be sketched as follows: “First-person thought-plus-affect”, e.g. wonderful; “Experiential”, e.g. entertaining; “Experiential with bodily reaction”, e.g. gripping; “Lasting impact”, e.g. memorable; “Cognitive evaluation”, e.g. complex, excellent. These groupings and semantic templates are compared with the classifications in the Appraisal Framework’s system of Appreciation. The report concludes with discussion of the relevance of the two frameworks for sentiment analysis and other language technology applications.

Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners